Nancy Pelosi Joins Ted Cruz And Louis Gohmert In Attacking CDA 230

from the not-great dept

Well, it appears that the attacks on Section 230 of the CDA are now officially bi-partisan. Following the path of Republicans Rep. Louis Gohmert and Senator Ted Cruz, now we have Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi deciding it's time to attack Section 230 of the CDA, by completely misrepresenting what it does, why it does that, and what it means to the internet. In a podcast with Kara Swisher, Pelosi said the following:

“230 is a gift to them, and I don’t think they are treating it with the respect that they should,” she said. “And so I think that that could be a question mark and in jeopardy. ... For the privilege of 230, there has to be a bigger sense of responsibility on it, and it is not out of the question that that could be removed.”

This is wrong on so many levels. Section 230 is not a "gift" to the tech companies. It's a gift to the public and their ability to speak freely on the internet. Section 230 is what enables all of these websites out there that allow us to speak out without having to get what we want to say approved.

And to argue that companies don't "respect" Section 230 is weird, given that internet companies have spent basically the past 20 years fighting for Section 230 and explaining why it was so important, while almost everyone else downplayed it, didn't care about it, or didn't understand it. The only internet company right now that doesn't seem to "respect" Section 230 would be Facebook, which caved in and supported chipping away at Section 230's important protections.

Look, it is completely fair to argue that the big internet companies have lots of very real problems -- including questions about how they treat their users, and about privacy. But the focus on Section 230 is bizarre and misguided. And attacking it in this way will literally do the opposite of what Pelosi seems to think it will. Removing Section 230 won't help bring about more competition. It won't help make the companies "act better." Rather, stripping 230 protections means that you won't get smaller companies building competing services to Facebook and Google, because it will be way too risky on the liability side. Facebook and Google can afford the fight. Others cannot.

Stripping 230 protections won't encourage companies to act better. It will encourage them to either not accept any user-generated content (removing the key communications function of the internet) or to stop moderating entirely, meaning that you end up with just the worst parts of the internet -- spam-filled, troll-filled garbage. Anyone who knows the first thing about Section 230, and why it was put in place, understands this. Unfortunately, there's the idea out there that Section 230 was a "gift" to the internet companies. It is not. It's a gift to the internet itself, meaning to all of us as users of the internet.

But, given that it's now a bi-partisan thing to misrepresent and attack CDA 230, perhaps we're reaching the end of the open internet experiment.